I make things

Tag: monologue vs. internal monologue

Evaluation

As a first thing I’d like to say that I think, the animation would be better of without the 2D part. Since I didn’t have enough time to work on it, and I had to cut out a few pieces, now it doesn’t clearly explain what’s happening. I mean maybe it doesn’t matter to audience becuse they don’t know the initial idea of the whole animation. Let’s then agree that everything is fine as long as you don’t have any expectations towards it.

Also I’d like to notice that during this project I was mainly trying to develop my 3D skills cause this is something I still don’t feel very comfortable with (but I do know that I can do better 2D).

Lying

The main task for this project was showing that I know how to make my character lie and make it obvious. Looking at this aspect I’m pretty confident that I’ve done a good job, on the beginning I planned much more eye movements but when I tried them it was too mcuh (example, when Nibbles get’s up saying “I didn’t do it” I wanted his eyes to move left and right, but it didn’t look natural, so I just left it straight and decided not to add any blinking in order do intensify the moment).

Acting in total – in my opinion is pretty good and I’ll happily use it in my animation showreel, but I think I’ll stop making characters with ears for a little while cause this was really a pain… Even though I knew how the ears should move it was really hard to make it that way (the hardest part wa when Nibbles gets up saying “I didn’t do it” it doens’t look very good). I do realise that they are not perfect, but I’m still learning.

Building/Rigging

As for the leve of skill I have in building and rigging in Maya I find it very satisfying. Though I still have to find a better way for construction and rigging the ears (if you look at them closely you can see they are not very smooth while bending also the movement where ears attach to the head is really limited). I also think that I got the Blend shapes right – now I feel more comfortable with them I think the next project will have even better performance (I kinda like making them, on the other hand I don’t think I’m the biggest fan of rigging….).

Sound – its okay. Not amazing but okay. But as I said in one of the previous posts I’m not a voice actor nor I know any, so If it’s not amazing please don’t mind it.
All the voices are recorded by me, and most of the additional sounds I got from https://www.freesound.org/ and the song is Jefferson Airplane – White Rabbit (still think it’s a good choice)

Script – my script gotten shorter 3 times. First thing happened just because I decided that some things weren’t necessary or had to be adjusted to the animation. 3rd one happened because of the lack of time and it only includes the 2D part. The decision was unavoidable, but even thought I think it harmed the piece a little bit, if you don’t know about it, it’s not noticable at all.

Post production – since I wanted my Arnold lights not to cast any shadows when I tired to export Ambiend Occlusion shadows all I got was a really dull dark effect, so I decided not to use them at all especially that I was trying to go with bright sterile environement.

Putting everything together was easy, what was not easy was fighting with Adobe Premiere to export the video… (look at the previous posts from today and the day before).

The audience and feedback – video was widely liked. With which I am pleased. Of course there were a few comments about the ears when Nibbles gets up but I already knew about that, and then there were a few comments saying that they would like to see more 2D (and that they actually REALLY LIKED 2D) but other than this people said that they like Nibbles, they know what sort of character he has and it makes him interresting. But what makes me happy the most is that they would like to see more of him. Also everyone understood the story and the point of the whole project without me even mentioning it.

Some comments

“It’s really great. I like best the cartoon moment. This little Russian is quivering line. It’s very nice. I would like to see more of your animation. (…) and the rabbit in 3D moves very nicely and you can feel the weight.”

“I love the 2D part!”

“Very cute xD”

“I love how he despise everyone in there, so much hatered!”

Time management and everything else– even thought I ran out of time I personally think that I did well with my time management. Of course looking from far away someone could have said that IT WOULD BE GOOD if I’ve finished a week before the deadline, but it wasn’t my fault and I don’t feel guilty in any way. I worked really hard for this animation and that’s what matters to me. Also I am actually amazed that I’ve managed to finish it at all, with the troubles I’ve come across I also had a few moments when I just wanted to throw everything away, give up and flea the country… I’m glad I didn’t thought.

EDITING NIGHTMARE VOL. II

I had to re-edit the whole thing but it is finished now and exporting as I write this. Everything will be submited in a few minutes and I can get to the next project.

I have to admit that the whole problem took way more time than I expected, but I think it’s just me being ‘lucky’….

Puting the stuff together.

Adobe Premiere for some unknown to me reason really didn’t like png files exported from Autodesk Maya with the use or Arnold renderer. But after re-saving them with Adobe Photoshop everything works fine again.

Also, After Effects was playing the video much faster than it should, and I didn’t manage to solve that problem(I’ll look in to it later).

EDITING NIGHTMARE

Soo… I finished my project on friday a few minutes before 5p.m. Now it’s Sunday 3.30p.m. and I still didn’t submit it. Why? Oh well because I can’t export it from Adobe Premiere. I tried everything…

I tried to change settings.

I redid the whole thing.

I tried to export sound and the video sepparately to find out which one is causing the problem. It wasn’t the sound.

Then I exported images made in TVpain which were fine.

It turned out that the problem was caused by frames exported from Autodesk Maya.

I exported half of them and it worked. Then I tried the other half and I got UNKNOWN ERROR again…(I don’t understand…)

I tired to find which freames in the 2nd half were faulty. I failed. BTW every exporting takes around 20-30 minutes…

Decided to re-save 2nd part with Photoshop’s”Automate”. It took about 2 hours…

I went back to Premiere and replaced Maya files with Photoshop’s files.

Everything seemed okay

Exported it.

Tried to play it. Video is glitching, in some places the sound is out.

Decided to try to use After Effects.

I’ve written down all the timing from premiere to make it quicker (this is hard to understand to everyone except me but it was like 5 in the morning…)

Set everything up. But it turns out that even though I set frame rate to 24fps the video plays much faster than on 25fps in Premiere. (Video should be around 1 minute 40 seconds long when in After Effects is around 1 minute 15 seconds….)

I know that after exporting it from After Effects I can stick it in to Premier and just slow it down to synchronise it with the sound, but how can I know that after hours of working on it when I slow it down all movement and transitions will look okay?

Once again I decide to try one more time with Premiere. This time I’ll re-save all of the frames from Autodesk Maya. And let’s hope it will work…

P.S.

Deadline was on Friday. I really hope that this whole situation explains why I didn’t submit my work on time and it proves that I wasn’t being lazy. (Honestly I was very happy with myself when I first set it up to export, I was so proud for making it on time…)

Script Vol. III, The Environement, Troubles , Test & And All Else

Script

This is I hope the last version of the srcipt. I decided to cut out the big part from the 2D piece. I have no time to make it all and it is neccesary. Even though the story still is understandable so I hope it won’t affect the result.

The Environement

After long thinking I decided to make the room white and also get rid of any shadows. I made this decision because it would be too difficult to finish the 2D animation with shadows.

Troubles

I had a little troubl wehile animating of which I forgotten.. Somehow right top whisker assigned himself to all of the face controllers. If you move eye lid/brow/cheek down, whisker goes down with it. I did check Blend shapes and while I was moving face controllers and whisker was moving with them, the zip in the Blend shape window was still. I didn’t manage to fix this problem. So you might notice it in the animation or not. Also I kept coming back in to the Blend shape window while animating to adjust some things, but that’s not really a trouble.

I found it difficult to animate the part when Nibbles doesn’t speak. I recorded some video references of myself (not gonna share, no way) in order to make it easier but still it was tricky. There was a lot of things I wanted him to do but he just wasn’t build to do it or I didn’t know how to animate it. I was stuck. I didn’t want him repeat the movements he already did but everything seemed boring. Also there was many things which I tried to animate but they looked awful… But in the end I somehow managed to do it.

Test

Okay so I have my test 3D animation in here, and I asked everyone what they think about it. Everyone said one thing, EARS – they’re not moving. I do agree with this so I’m going to try and give them more life and let’s hope it will look better. (btw everyone loves the cheek going up YAY).

Everything else

The title – I have decided on the title It will be “Mr. L. Nibbles – Guilty”, I have chosen this titlebecause I wanted the audience to know straight away what is happening in the naimation. Also he is guilty and everyone will know about that.

REC – I am planing on adding the REC with the red dot and a frame around the edges, because from the beginning the idea was that the camera through which we see is the camera in the interrogation room. In order to make it more obvious I thought of the frame.

The start – video will start with the picture of the police files with L. Nibbles- Guilty written on it. Then there will be a sound of an old camera shutter closing which will lead to the next picture of Nibbles mugshot, then another shutter sound and the video starts.

ANIMATIC

It has come the time for me to create my first animatic. It’s not very precise but I belive it’s good enough to help me animate the bunny.

This Animatic is made only for the first part o my animation which will be in 100% made with 3D medium and I will be using Autodesk Maya to do so.

Please don’t mind the sound, I still have to work on it.

The second part of the animation will be in 2D and I will be using TVpaint, thus I want to show my drawing skill, and also I think it’s the best medium for the story telling. Also I feel quite comfortable with the software so it should be fun.

Here is a little piece I made while I was waiting for the rigging tutorial.

I didn’t have the audio recorded when I was making this so I just animated the part which is not really affected by it. Also please don’t mind the beginning and the end.

Script Vol. II & Audio Recording

I’ve mad a little changes in my script, Basically I just got rid of a few things and this is how it looks now

The reason why I decided to cut some moments out because I don’t have as much time left as I expected and they weren’t necesary for the story telling.

Audio Recording

I am really unhappy about the audio which I recorded. I had to use my and my boyfriend’s voices. I feel like they don’t really fit in there, or more like they don’t fit in to the creation in my head, but I couldn’t find anyone who would be a great match so there was no choice.

Since my boyfriend is not very good at voice acting plus his voice is too deep, I had to be Mr. Nibbles. It was easy for me to record it since I knew what. The only bad thing is that I wanted him to have chilled man’s voice and I don’t sound like a man so I had to change my concept from the regular voice to high pitched little bit chipmunk like. I guess it doesn’t look bad but it’s just not what I wanted.

)I think it would be great if we could have some actors coming over to uni to lend us their voices, or maybe some co-operation with other course?)

Bunny drawn with the black line is 3D and bunny drawn with the red line is 2D. The background is constantly 3D but things appearing after bunny’s transformation are all made in 2D.

Music

In the end I have decided to use Jefferson Airplane – White Rabbit song in the backround for the trippy part. I can’t think of the better song for it, there is a rabit and there are mushrooms and all the weird stuff.

Interior

Interior of my animation is really simple . We can see 2 plain white walls, a light grey table and a grey chair.

Some references where the inspiration came from

Firstly I was thinking about placing a mirror on the wall behind the bunny, but I decided that it is not necessary for the story telling and it would just make animation more complicated.

The actual interrogation room

Vol. I

Vol. II

I’ve decided to change the colours of the furniture because it was’t visible enough in the rendered image. Also I think it looks a bit more interresting, but I’m still not sure if that’s why I want, so there might be more changes on the way.

Character Design

Mr. Nibbles is an anthropomorphic bunny.Has very simple shaped body with tiny hands, feet, a big head with poofy cheeks and two long pointy ears. I wanted his colours to remind Bugs Bunny (as a little tribute, his shape is similar too), but I also chose them because I wanted people to concentrate on the performance which would be difficult if he had 10 different colours on him. He doesn’t wear clothes, cause this animal world is not as advanced as Zootopia. He is very self-confident. He doesn’t have a real job, likes to hangout with his mates, currently uncapable of having a proper relationship, has a big family and always visits his mother at the weekend. Like all bunnies he has troubles with compulsive claiming of everyon elses properties, chewing and eating of edible and inedible things which gets him in troubles.

I had some troubles with mudbox. As always I had some vertices to fix before I could start but then I just couldn’t paint some stuff how I wanted. I took some pistures of it but unfortunately I can’t find them…. Basicaly I had a big trouble separating white cheeks from the bottom eyelids. Thats why now when bunny is blinkin his bottom eyelids aren’t perfectly smooth grey…

Rig

Vol. I

skeleton

controlers

skeleton+controlers

body

body+controlers

body+controlers+skeleton

Vol. II

Unfortunately I my first rig caused me many troubles. After I finaly managed to make everything work I was unable to animate it. Even though the frame rate was set to 24fps the playback would play 5fps, which just made it impossible. That’s why I desided to delete the whole thing and redo it.

controllers

skeleton

skeleton+controllers

body+controllers

body+skeleton

body+skeleton+controllers

perspective view

Problems

While I was tying to bind skin to my rig (Both versions of the rig) for some reason I was unable to use Interactive Bind Skin (I would have capsules only for a few bones and the influences were strange)

That’s why I used the Classic Bind Skin. Because of that I had to Paint the skin weights wat turned out to be a nightmare…With the first rig I just couldn’t make the armpits fold properly and the ears didn’t have enough bones in so it looked terrible.. That’s why when I was redoing my rig I decided to add more edge loops. Which made the wholething much easier.

more loops. LOOK AT THE EARS!

Also I had a big trouble with my texture. After I finished using mudbox and imported the texture to maya my model appeared half transparent. Of course Andy helped me fix it, I just had to unlink the transparency in the texture specs.

Driven Keys

I made myself a beautiful face rig controller with assigned blendshapes. Even thought I made quite many of them and I spend a lot of time on them there were still times when I had to go back to the Blend Shape Editor to adjust some things

beautiful face

R cheek

R pupil

L brow

mouth

Blend Shapes

Lipsync shapes

a

u w

o

m

l

f

j k

r b p

e y x

c d g s t

Some other shapes

stupid face

regular pupil

minimum and maximum resized pupils

Overall:

I think that Nibbles came out to be pretty decent, of cours I’m still a bit away from the perfectly build and rigged character skil but I’m getting there slowly. I hope that I made him advanced enough so I could get a satisfying performence out of him.

Lying is a form of deception, but not all forms of deception are lies.

Lying is giving some information while believing it to be untrue, intending to deceive by doing so.

A lie has three essential features:

A lie communicates some information

The liar intends to deceive or mislead

The liar believes that what they are ‘saying’ is not true

There are some features that people think are part of lying but aren’t actually necessary:

A lie does not have to give false information

A lies does not have to be told with a bad (malicious) intention – white lies are an example of lies told with a good intention

This definition says that what makes a lie a lie is that the liar intends to deceive (or at least to mislead) the person they are lying to. It says nothing about whether the information given is true or false.

This definition covers ordinary cases of lying and these two odd cases as well:

the case where someone inadvertently gives true information while believing that they’re telling a lie

I want the last helping of pie for myself, so I lie to you that there is a worm in it. When I later eat that piece of pie I discover that there really is a worm in it

the case where nobody is deceived by me because they know that I always tell lies.“

Here are some visual examples of what people do when they lie. I’m sure some of those will become very usefull to me.

Eyes darting back and forth

Rapid blinking

Closing eyes for more than one second at a time

Looking up to the right

Looking directly to the right

Looking down to the right

Bunched skin beneath and wrinkles beside the eyes

Face touching

Pursed lips

Excessive sweating

Blushing

Head shaking

As an example of a lie in animation I thought of the moment from “Brave” when Merida lies to her mum about the ingridients of the magic cake

Monologue

“Monologue in theatre is a speech presented by a single character, most often to express their mental thoughts aloud, though sometimes also to directly address another character or the audience.

Interior monologue involves a character externalizing their thoughts so that the audience can witness experiences that would otherwise be mostly internal. In contrast, a dramatic monologue involves one character speaking to another character. Monologues can also be divided along the lines of active and narrative monologues. In an active monologue a character is using their speech to achieve a clear goal. Narrative monologues simply involve a character telling a story and can often be identified by the fact that they are in the past tense.“

I’ve came across the example of the monologue from the film “Gone Girl” which I’ve seen a few years ago and I found really good. This piece is from the beginning of the film and I think that this monologue is so well written that it really allowes the audience to get in to the story

Now for the example of Interior Monologue I thought of Kronk from “Emperors New Groove” where we see a conversation of him with his good and bad self (I know they have bodies and stuff but it is still himself). And this shows us the great conflict which character can have with himself.

Screentwriting

Thinking about writting my script I swam through the internet looking for some tips. First I found out that script writing and screenwriting are two different things.

“Script Writing

Script writing is the process of writing dialogue which can be used in talk shows, news programs, sports broadcasts and infotainment programs. It is also correct to call writing a script for a movie or a narrative TV show script writing, but the script usually involves more than just character descriptions and dialogue. Script writing doesn’t involve discussing the visuals of a TV show or a movie. This is a more specific type of script writing which is called screenwriting.

Screenwriting

Screenwriting is also a process of writing a script, but this is only used for filmmaking that have narrative elements that involve dramatic elements and other components of the film that need to be seen on the screen to serve the overall narrative like the setting, the lighting and movements. Screenwriting provides the visuals that complement what the characters are doing and saying. The mood accentuates the drama or humor that the characters are executing based on the script.“

Then I found this really cool video about the importancy of the screenwriter which made me realise how much more I still have to work on my ability of screenwriting. The program looks at the film “Gone Girl”(same film as in the Monologue) and it made me wanna watch it again cause I’m sure that the second time I’ll see much more.

Another very usefull video I’ve found (the same author) about the importancy of the screenplay. This time author is looking at “Moonrise Kingdom” which is a perfect example for analysing Wes Anderson’s style. I find this video particularly usefull since W. Anderson is one of my favourite directors and I really admire his creations. I find everything in the video really valuable on the journey to find my own style and in order to be able create interesting characters and endearing stories.

Here is my Ist version of the script. It is also my first script made with the use of Celtx which I find really useful and easy to work with (here is a link to the basic tutorial about using the program https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX06J2cG9eo&t=4s )

NO TITLE (yet)

Audience

What I’m going for in this project is the teenage and mature audience, since my main character will be experiencing the mushroom trip. But the way the story is made also allows younger audience to watch it since there want be any straight forwad informations not suitable for children in it.

Research about the Bunnies and Trippy Stuff

Bunnies in animation

I decided to do a wide research about bunnies in animation in order to choose the right construction of my own character. I think it is really important to find the right construction in order to be able to animate it in the best way.

Rabbit – Winnie the Pooh

Rabbit is deffinitely a cartoon version of a bunny and his main facial expressions components are big eyes, eyebrows and ears. The rest of his face doesnt seem to have any bigger effect on the emotions presented. His amrs are like human which gives them wide range of action available, and the legs are like bunny legs which make him hop which can become a bit inconvinient.

Petter Rabbit – The World of Peter Rabbit & Friends

Even thought Petter Rabbit is a good looking “copy” of a real bunny his facial expressions are nearly dead and everything depends on head and ears movement also his limbs are to short which could affect the animation.

Bunnies – Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

Again those bunnies facial expressions are very limited and everything depends on ears. Also the limbs are kind of short to be easy to work with.

Thumper & his girl- Bambi

Those bunnies seem just perfect. The expressions are in eyes ears nose cheeks everything plays for the show. Still not a fun of short limbs. But facial expression nailed it. Il definitely try to construck similar face for my charcter.

Bugs Bunny – Looney Tunes

Bugs Bunny’s facial expressions are dependable on the same elements as Thumpers but he also has longer limbs since it’s an anthropomorphic, and this is something I’d like to do myself.

Roger Rabbit – Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Roger Rabbit is really simmilar to Bugs Bunny but he seems much more flexible I qould even say more cartoony. I think it would be a good thing to use some stretching in my animation to show the horror of the bad mushroom trip.

Alice in Wonderland

White Rabbit

The 2D White Rabbit is not very expressive and his limbs are too short but hopefully there are other versions of the most famous rabbit in the world.

The 3D white rabbit is much more expressive and he looks a lot like a real rabbit but still his limbs are to short for me.Ev thought I think it is good to analyse the way he acts thus he is more like a real bunny and someone already spend a lot of time researching and developing his reactions.

March Hare

The March Hare is a perfect base for the mushroom trip bunny. His limbs are long enough and his expressions are good too. I’m pretty sure I will use it as one of my major references when animating.

Judy Hopps – Zootopia

I honestly think that Judy is the best animated character yet. She’s just so real and alive! Everything is moving! I’d love to be able to make my character like her but I don’t think I’m there yet. Anyway. Judy has long limbs very expressive face, and perfect bunny reactions to her surrounding. I will definitely use her as one of my main references.

Trippy Stuff and transitions

Merlin and Mim – The Sword in Stone

The transitions between characters that Merlin and Mim are changing can become very useful in the musrhoom trip bunny part.

Love and Theft

I think use a face transition could be rally interesting, again for the mushroom trip part